Black Blood Brothers – 1 – Elegantly swift bishounen attacks!

by bateszi
| October 9, 2006

I was quite determined to find fault with Black Blood Brothers – I took my fair share of melodramatic bishounen-horror in Night Head Genesis and eventually rejected it, so I feared more of the same from this show. Typically I was wrong. While it won’t win many end-of-season plaudits for originality, Black Blood Brothers at least matches it’s growling characters vocal angst with scene after scene of elegantly swift action set against an all too neon post-apocalyptic, city destroying back drop. This first episode is mostly shoujo eye candy, but it still moves fast enough and contains enough humour to at least retain my attention for a solid 22 minutes of fun action.

The lead character is a long haired and handsome “old blood” vampire called Jirou Mochizuki. Jirou is haunted by ghostly mirages of his now-dead girlfriend and appears to be travelling the world with his fun loving, blonde younger brother who notably cameos in this episode with a lovable innocent sense of humour. Jirou is the kind of character who gets away with wearing a floppy red top-hat, carries a big shiny sword and attacks groups of vampires with his body outlined by the glowing night moon. He is an elegant yet tortured soul and no doubt the main theme running through out Black Blood Brothers will concern him slaying anyone in his way, all the while coming to terms with past and present relationship troubles.

This first episode was easy to watch because the characters have emotionally layered and multi-faceted personalities. Importantly, Black Blood Brothers never takes itself too seriously. As a horor buff, the bullet dodging vampire attacks ain’t half bad either!